Mentor/ Protege Experience

In the reading in The Essential Guide to Group Communication, the book discusses the roles of a mentor and a protege. A mentor is a experienced, well respected role model to a lesser experience person, know as a protege. This relationship helps develop the protege faster because they are leaning from someone with past experience. The protege also receives "support, recognition, and friendship from this mentor, who benefits by demonstrating their value to the company. The four different stages this relationship goes through are initiation, cultivation, separation, and redefinition. I am currently in this type on relationship with my RA Laura. We are in the cultivation stage because we have formed an interpersonal bond and she has begin to teach and support me in becoming an RA. She is showing me off to all her friends and she is always talking highly of me. Laura is also very supportive of me becoming an RA, and has volunteered to help and work along side me for the job interview for this next weekend. I hope that we do not ever drift apart, which occurs in the separation stage, because she has become more than just a mentor to me.